The 'God-gap'

President Bush's embrace of the National Day of Prayer highlights a division among even the most faithful from both parties

President George W. Bush is a man who's not afraid to declare his personal faith in Jesus Christ. Most of the president's opponents and supporters can at least agree about that.

But the manner in which Bush's faith shapes his worldview and, therefore, public policy continues to spark debate. A similar use of Scripture by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry shows the issue won't disappear in this election year.

In March, Kerry read a passage from the Book of James in a Mississippi church indirectly criticizing Bush. Kerry asked, "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?" Reading from the Bible -- specifically the Book of James -- at church was previously outlined in 2003 as part of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's plan to connect with "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks" by talking about the friend he had in Jesus.

This controversial mix of religion and politics shouldn't be surprising, says Jeffery S. Siker, professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in California.

"The temptation of every politician is to baptize their rhetoric with religious language," Siker explains. "Bush seems more comfortable doing this. Kerry much less so."

The recent National Day of Prayer offers another example of Bush placing prayer in a national spotlight.

Congress established the National Day of Prayer, and President Harry Truman signed it into law in 1952. The event took form in 1988 when President Ronald Reagan designated it would be observed annually on the first Thursday in May.

Not until Bush took office in 2001, however, did the event garner national exposure, says Mark Fried, spokesman for the National Day of Prayer Task Force, a nonprofit Judeo-Christian group that coordinates its observance.

Bush, Fried says, "has been very open about his faith and his prayer life. And he's taken a much more visible role in celebrating the National Day of Prayer than any other president. He brought the event into the White House."

Participants pray for all elected leaders regardless of political party.

But the different ways Bush and Kerry talk about God bears watching this year because of a widening domestic divide that some political pollsters have dubbed the "God-Gap."

Among those who attend church more than once a week, 63 percent vote Republican, 37 percent vote Democratic, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in late 2003. A study released this month by the television newsmagazine "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" and U.S. News and World Report magazine found that 69 percent of white evangelicals vote Republican or lean toward Republican.

Even among Roman Catholics, Kerry's religious denomination, the poll found 45 percent supporting Kerry, and 41 percent backing Bush. Some Catholic bishops have criticized Kerry for not favoring the church's teaching against abortion.

In this election, candidates know that religious voters matter, says Geoff Layman, author of "The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics" and an associate professor of political science at Vanderbilt University.

"Kerry has to win a pretty heavy constituency among Catholics to become president," Layman said.

"The Democrats can't allow themselves to be painted as the God-less party. They have to paint themselves as people with values, God-fearing people," he said.

It will be a struggle for Kerry, since, Layman says, evangelicals and other Protestant Christians "look at Bush and can say, 'He's one of us.' "

Edna McVey says she can identify with Bush. She has coordinated Day of Prayer events at Grafton Baptist Church in York County since 2000.

When it comes to his Christian faith, "The president we have now is not afraid to speak up for what he believes," McVey says.

She is comfortable with Bush telling author and Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward in the book, "Plan of Attack," that instead of turning to his father, the former President Bush, for counsel on going to war in Iraq, he sought strength from "a higher father." He gets "instruction from the Bible," McVey says. "Everything we need to know is in the Bible."

When it comes to matters of war and peace, says the Rev. David B. Simmons, the president should pray about it.

"He would not be true to himself if he didn't," says Simmons, pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Newport News, one of thousands of churches nationwide using the "Forty Days of Purpose" program, based on Rick Warren's best-selling book "The Purpose-Driven Life." Simmons says Bush's life is driven by his faith. It's something often heard when the president speaks.

"Where it becomes so dangerous is because people on the other side of the world believe we are fighting a holy war. That is Christianity against Islam," Simmons says.